Medical Schools Recruiting Non-traditional Students

Mary Gratch spent 10 years trying to become an actress, but once she reached her goal she decided it was not enough. So now she is trying to become a doctor.

As she begins her fourth year at the School of Medicine at the State University of New York campus in Stony Brook, Gratch represents a future direction in medical education.

Throughout the country, educators and administrators say, medical schools have been making an effort to recruit a more diverse type of student.

Part of the reason for this push is the theory that applicants who know about more than physics and organic chemistry will bring a more sensitive touch to the practice of medicine.

But there is also a less idealistic drive at work: as medical school applications declined sharply during the past decade, students like Gratch were one way tid what many non-traditional applicants are required to do: She returned to school to take the science classes she did not take in college.

In many ways, late-medical-comers say, becoming a doctor later in life is harder than taking the more traditional route.

But in other ways, older students say, some distance from college is an advantage.

``I`ve seen the real world,`` said Amanda Weintraub Ratliff, who has worked as a private school teacher, a social worker and is now a llama rancher on an island off Washington State. She will enter medical school in August. ``I`ve gotten all that out of my system and I`m ready to focus,`` she said.

There is evidence that during the past decade, when the number of non- traditional students increased, the requirements for medical school admission decreased.

But older students and many medical school administrators argue that grades alone do not a doctor make. Non-traditional students, they say, bring qualities that modern medicine needs.

In general, they say, these students are not as likely to be lured by wealth.

Doctors who are not pursuing wealth are more likely to shun more lucrative medical specialties and choose primary care such as pediatrics, and internal medicine instead.

This different perspective is what some fear will be lost if competition for medical school continues to increase once again.